This she determined should not be the case. So after the royal breakfast one morning--and a very delightful and natural meal it was, consisting chiefly of nuts and fruit--Queen Leeboo seized her sceptre, the poisoned spear, and stepped lightly down from her throne.
"That isn't good enough," she said, "I want a little fresh air."
Her attendants threw themselves on their faces before her, but she made them get up, and very much astonished they were to see the beautiful queen march along the great hall and step out on to the skull-decorated verandah.
The palace was built on a mountain ledge or table-land of small dimensions. It was backed by gigantic and precipitous rocks, now most beautifully draped with the greenery of bush and fern, and trailed over by a thousand charming wild flowers.
Leeboo, as we may call her for the present, seated herself languidly on a dais. She knew better than to be rash. Her object was to gain the entire confidence of her people. In this alone lay her hopes of escape, and thoughts of freedom were ever uppermost in her mind.
This was the first time she had been beyond the portals of her royal prison-house, but she determined it should not be the last.
While her attendants partially encircled her she gazed dreamily at the glorious scenery beyond and beneath her.
From her elevated position she could view the landscape for leagues and leagues on every side. Few of us, in this tame domestic land that we all love so well, have ever visited so beautiful a country as these highlands of Bolivia.
Fresh from the hands of its Maker did it seem on this fresh, cool, delightful morning. The dark green of its rolling woods and forests, the heath-clad hills, the streams that meandered through the dales like threads of silver, the glittering lakes, the plains where the llamas, and even oxen, roamed in great herds, and far, far away on the horizon the serrated mountains, patched and flecked with snow, that hid their summits in the fleecy clouds; the whole formed as grand and lovely a panorama as ever human eyes beheld.
But it was marred somewhat by the immediate surroundings of poor Leeboo.